Chapter 23 - 23)Night's Shade.

[Set name for Guardian of 'Forest of Silence']

"Shade"

[Confirm new name 'Shade' for Guardian of 'Forest of Silence']

"Confirm"

"My Liege, this one shall be eternally grateful to you, I shall cherish the name you have bestowed upon me and protect your honor at all costs." Shade said while bowing down.

"Uhh thass alright but there's a bigger issue, we can't have others seeing you out in the open just yet." Night said while completely ignoring Noel's confused look.

"My Liege, if I may, the fragment that you hold is a vessel to hold my soul, I can conceal myself inside it until you wish for my appearance"

"So essentially, you can hide in there and come out when I need you?" Night asked.

"That is the case, My Liege"

After Shade concealed himself in the fragment, Night read out the items description:

[Guardian of the Forest of Silence's fragment: Fragment dropped by the Guardian of the 'Forest of Silence'.

Currently holding: Shade

Collected fragments: 1/?]

Before he could think about it too much he was interrupted by Noel,

"Boy, you're really testing me here aren't you? what just happened here? I've seen things that nobody has ever seen but this, this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this."

"I'm not.....fully sure as well but something IN ME told me I had the Guardians life in my hands......I-I d-don't know" Night replied while looking at his hands mysteriously.

"Alright"

".....Huh?"

"Don't worry about it, for now, if anything it sounds like a good thing, anyway let's not waste any more time and head out, we're a few hours away from our destination, we somehow managed to cover all this distance in almost a week which is lesser than the time I estimated we'd take."

Night just looked at his master, Noel, who was now leading the way to Vraun, he couldn't help but smile after what Noel said.

// // //

While Night went on his adventure, Nate was putting in a lot of effort to try and master mana manipulation, even after a whole week of training he hadn't even grasped 1% of it.

Annoyed he finally decided to go to the Mage's Academy, which is essentially the same thing as a GrandMaster's dojo.

However, upon arriving at his destination he was surprised, the academy was almost 5 times as big as the dojo and was filled with players as well as NPC's who were trying to master different spells but he noticed that there was absolutely no one practicing 'Mana Manipulation/Control', while he was loitering around one of the teacher's approached him.

"Greetings, young mage, I assume you're here for training, well, before that let me explain to you how the Academy works."

"Greetings Teacher," Nate said as he brought his palm and his together.

"The Academy itself has 5 floors and right now we are on the 1st floor.

Each floor is essentially a test to overcome and on the last floor, it is said that a Legendary Mage awaits the student who overcomes the tests.

The tests naturally get harder as you climb up the floors and so far only 2 students have made it past the first floor.

There's a teacher stationed on each floor, if you approach them they'll explain to you the requirements that need to be met."

"Thank you, oh and I was wondering, why isn't anyone practicing Mana Manipulation?" Nate asked.

"Well that is obvious, some have tried for decades and haven't even understood 10% of it, none of them are willing to waste so much time," He said while pointing to the players and NPC's there.

"I see, once again thank you Master" Nate said while bowing.

"I wonder, how long it'll take me to reach the last floor *sigh*..." he said while looking at the tall structure in front of him.